Big play offense vs. ball control offense

GB is proving to be a big play offense. They're exciting to watch sometimes & are consistently getting explosive plays from the passing game. That's their problem. Let me explain.

Teams who play ball control offense win consistently. They control the clock & give their opponents minimal opportunities to score. They wear opposing defenses down with long, sustained drives.

Big play offenses can run up high scoring games & can even get themselves quickly back into games where they've gotten behind early. But as GB is showing when the game is on the line, more often than not the big play suddenly becomes too big to attain. Instead of being practiced at moving the chains, GB is digging deep into the well too often & coming up short. Couple that with containment issues on defense & ST & you have the '09 4-4 Packers.

WCO is designed to be ball control offense by way of passing instead of grind-it-out rushing. GB has definitely forgotten this all important fact of their heritage. I haven't observed anything close to WCO in MM's offense in '09. If they're attempting to move away from it to something else that's fine, if it's by design. But to me it seems as though Rodgers looks for the home run too often. That's why he holds onto the ball waiting for that opportunity to put quick points on the board.

If MM doesn't get this under control Rodgers will rely too much on his big play ability instead of letting MM's offense do it's thing. And that will amount to what we have so far in '09, mediocrity. It reminds me of the '83 team. Lofton, Jefferson, Coffman all had that big play ability & Lynn Dickey was strong-armed enough to get it to them. But up against the Cowboys in the playoffs it fell short.

I think McCarthy's love for the deep ball is what's going to get Rodgers killed. Receivers just don't appear to be running as many of those quick slants and shallow crossing routes like they did a couple years ago. I don't know if that was a Favre thing or what, but it worked. We need to go back to being the team that leads the league in YAC with quick throws and broken tackles. Quick throws also equals less sacks, so I don't really see how McCarthy hasn't thought of this yet. I get the feeling that he's stubborn.

I believe this is the main problem with our defense, is field position and time of possession. The Packers defense is on the field all the time and has some of the worst starting points on average, mix in bad special teams and you will lose to an 0-7 team every time.

The high powered offense hurts you even when its successful, and when it not, it really hurts you with sacks or INTs. Thats what drives me nuts with MM, if you are going high powered Offense then bring it all game all the time. Yet MM will go conservative and try to slow it down.

Oh, and if you are even going to consider this kind of offense, you have to have an offensive line that can block. Really after the first or second game a good coach would have realized that and changed his game plan. I think MM every week believes the O-line is going to do the job so he can run the offense he wants. I still think he is thinking this way against Dallas, main topic this week is the O-line, clean things up again and try the same thing over and over again.